The present invention relates to the field of information technology, including, more particularly, to systems and techniques for building a map showing where an application is executing.
Application programs have evolved from software systems running on a single computer to software systems running on multiple computers. For example, in a multi-tier or N-tier architecture, there can be an application presentation tier, an application business tier, and an application data tier. Each tier can include multiple computers, connected via a network, which execute various parts of the application. Different computers can be executing parts of the application at the same or different times.
Because of the complexity of such a distributed application, developers, system administrators, and other IT professionals may not know where an application is executing. Thus, it can be difficult to understand performance limitations or bottlenecks of the application, spot application configuration mistakes, identify the impact an application modification or downtime could have, debug an application, or understand how the application accesses its resources.
Thus, there is a need for an application execution map.